


you and me and the war of the end times

by thatsparrow



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), F/M, Gen, Heimdall (Marvel) Lives, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-04
Updated: 2019-05-04
Packaged: 2020-02-23 21:17:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18710140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsparrow/pseuds/thatsparrow
Summary: When Thanos arrives, Thor is the one who tells her to evacuate the ship.--an alternate take on what happens to thor and valkyrie during infinity war and endgame (bonus heimdall lives au)[minor spoilers for avengers: endgame]





	you and me and the war of the end times

**Author's Note:**

> enormous thanks to [KerriLovegood](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KerriLovegood) for beta-reading this for me
> 
> title from "calamity song" by the decemberists

When Thanos arrives, Thor is the one who tells her to evacuate the ship.

"What about you?" Val asks as the bridge goes earthquake-unsteady under their feet. If they don't move fast, any decision will be made for them by Thanos taking the ship apart at the seams. "With one of the stones, he's already got enough power to rival Hela twice over. You can't face him alone." Thor looks past her in place of an answer; even with one eye gone, there's enough expression in his face to give him away. "Oh—so that's your plan, then? You don't intend to beat him at all."

"Certainly I intend to _try_ ," Thor says, flexing his hands like he's working the lightning free, waking up the sparks that have gone dim from lack of use. Since Hela, they haven't had much call for such fireworks. "Failing that, I can at least buy you enough time to make your exit and be satisfied having done so." Another blast breaks against their hull, beams groaning along the ship's length. Val is surprised the shields have held out this long, the Grandmaster's glorified party yacht put up against a war machine.

"You're not the only one who can stir up a distraction, Your Majesty. Besides, you've got a better purpose to serve than playing cannon fodder for Thanos. Let me stay behind. Gods know I can hold him off as well as you can—better, even."

The sound of an alarm tells her a fire has broken out in the cargo bay. Thor reaches for her hand. "You know I would not be king without your aid. I have no interest in being king without you at my side." Val imagines these are the sorts of things Odin would have once said to Frigga; what does Thor mean by offering them to her here, moments before their ship is blown to splinters? "Please, let me ask this of you—that you lead them in my stead."

"It's not supposed to work this way." Something must have happened to the lighting systems because her vision has gone blurry. One of the blasts must have fucked up the air pressure because her breath feels stuck in her throat. "The oath of the Valkyrior: my life for the throne. I'm the one who's meant to save _you_."

"Save me by saving them. Will you? Promise me, Val."

Damn him and his heroics. _Damn_ him. "Yes, fine. I promise." She tightens her grip on his hand, almost hard enough to bruise. "Stay alive, if you can. If not, I hope you wake up in Valhalla. Certainly the gods can agree you've earned it."

"Would they? I suppose we'll find out." Thanos' ship is above them now, a broad-winged beast blocking out the sun. "Hurry now. Heimdall is waiting to guide you to safer skies. Perhaps if the gods are benevolent, I will see you again."

And then he's gone, lightning waiting in his palms as he readies to throw himself against the great wheel of Thanos' crusade. This once, Val would rather see him play a coward.

Heimdall is waiting as Thor promised, and it's clear when their king himself has joined the fray, the missile-tipped strikes halting long enough for them to steer the ship clear, to make the jump where Thanos can't follow.

 _If anything, let it be quick. He deserves better than to suffer_.

 

—

 

"Breathe easy, Valkyrie," Heimdall says to her the next day. "Our king yet lives."

"A joke like that seems better suited to Loki."

"I rarely lie. Certainly not about this."

They've set the Grandmaster's ship on a course for the nearest star system, some collection of a half-dozen planets circling a red dwarf. Nothing worthy of postcards or tavern songs, but sophistication enough to serve the repairs they need. Their destination after is still undecided, but Thor had made mention of Midgard. Val hasn't been since well before Hela, hadn't thought much of it when she'd visited then, but she supposes it's likely changed in the past few millennia; most things have.

"I'm not looking to be soothed by false hope. How can you be sure?"

"Sight is not an all-encompassing ability, but my eyes do not fail me. His fight with Thanos saw him and Bruce both cast out into space, carried into the path of a passing ship. He is unconscious, but undoubtedly alive. Loki's whereabouts I'm finding more difficult to divine."

Val doesn't see herself grieving for that particular loss, but it does seem something of a pity—she wouldn't go so far as to say the world was better with him in it, but it was at least more interesting. Still, if she is only to be guaranteed the safety of half of Asgard's surviving royalty, she'd rather it be Thor.

Perhaps Heimdall's sight is more far-reaching than she knows, or perhaps she's just become unpracticed at hiding her own tells, but he shakes his head before she speaks. "I tell you this to set your mind at ease, not to propose altering our course. Thor faces no immediate risk and our first efforts must be made in pursuit of protecting Asgard's people. You know this."

"I can know it and be displeased with its limitations." While Heimdall is her only company, she'll allow herself this moment of petulance. Still, he is right. "Once the ship is repaired, we'll chart a course for Midgard. If we are to cross paths with Thor again, likely it will be there."

"A wise choice, Lady Valkyrie."

"Don't—" she says, reflexive. "I'm not a lady, I'm not royalty—titles like that belong to him, not me."

Heimdall raises an eyebrow but doesn't argue. _Had Thor perished, those titles would have been yours_ , Val imagines him saying. _The people accept your right to the throne as much as they do his_.

_I promised him I'd watch over them. I made no promises to replace him._

 

—

 

A man in the cabins is the first to go.

It happens fast, enough so that Val wonders if there's been some breach in the hull, some strange pocket of cosmic radiation that's powerful enough to collapse Aesir to ash. Another falls—this time one of the women who'd taken up work in the engine rooms, there and gone like something sculpted of sand. A blonde-haired boy who holds fast to his mother's leg even as his fingers disappear. A teenage girl who's gone before she's made it ten steps to the door. Val draws her sword, but it feels an empty gesture as soon as she does it. There is no enemy to fight here; she cannot will her fury and her frustration into something substantial enough to cut in two.

It's over almost as soon as it starts, a ripple cresting from bow to stern that leaves half of their already too-few numbers turned to ash. She feels grateful when she learns that Heimdall still lives, then unbearably guilty for thinking so as the rest of the ship falls into mourning. _Perhaps if the gods are benevolent, I will see you again_ , Thor had said. After this loss, she doubts that very much.

 

—

 

Heimdall spends the next few hours with his eyes trained toward Midgard news outlets before he pieces together the story: Thanos' ships over the cities of New York and Edinburgh, an army of Outriders shattering the shield around Wakanda, the battlelines broken open for Thanos to claim the last of the stones. A snap of his fingers and half of all life faded to ash.

So that's it, then. They lost, and Val wasn't even there this time to crawl away from the battlefield.

"We should have been there," she says to Heimdall that night, bruising her palm with her grip around the neck of a bottle. It's still corked, but she'll at least allow herself the temptation of holding it in her hand. "We should have fought alongside them."

"We are still several days from Midgard. What would you have had us done? Bend the laws of space to allow us at his side?"

"Yes."

"Had we been able, I would have, but the fates decided our place was elsewhere." He taps his fingers against the arm of the chair; she's not used to seeing that sort of restless motion from him. "Does it ease your mind at all to know that our presence would not have tipped the scales? That Thanos was a breath away from victory even at the moment of his arrival?"

"It doesn't, actually."

"No, I hadn't thought so." Heimdall extends his hand for the bottle, uncorks it to take a deep pull of the blue-purple liquor at the bottom. She doesn't hold it against him—the bottle was pulled from the Grandmaster's top shelf; someone should be enjoying it. "Millennia spent guarding the Bifrost's gates meant observing far more battles than I participated in, standing by while my eyes were trained towards the bloodshed even with a sword ready in my hand. It never grew easier; the battles only grew less frequent." He takes another long drink, wipes his mouth on the back of his hand. "I, too, would rather have been at his side, even if that meant suffering a different sort of end. But, alas. Instead, both of us are cursed to live and to move forward. Thor will have need of us yet."

"To sweep up the ash?"

"To rebuild." Heimdall recorks the bottle before setting it aside. "Though I am neither so blessed nor so cursed as to have a window into the future, I am willing to hazard a guess that our most difficult times are still to come. It is no longer any external foe that Asgard faces, but the risk of a broken spirit—the latter proves much harder to lay to rest."

"If it hasn't already been crushed with the toppling of the palace towers. Or certainly when they watched their already whittled numbers fade to dust. They've not just lost their homes, but now their children, their parents, their partners." She's already gone through this once with the slaughter of the Valkyrior and the loss of her own love, feels that same ache that goes deeper than the sting of cracked ribs. Something hollow inside her, the same wide-mouth gulf she'd spent centuries trying to fill up with Sakaaran ale. What was the point of trying to move forward when she's now cursed to survive it again? "Truly, Heimdall—what are any of us still living for?"

He exhales slow, sighs with the weight of a man who's witnessed every horror the universe could conjure up while never once exhausting its supply. "I do not know. Perhaps it is on Midgard along with our king—if not, perhaps we can build it."

 

—

 

There's a brief moment of panic as they steer the ship into Midgard's upper atmosphere—red-button alert responses from the fragile coalition of Midgardian governments who have already watched one foe descend from the stars and left them torn asunder. Given the bloodshed they've endured, Val permits them their caution; she understands it less after Heimdall radios that their ship only carries refugees. But Thor intervenes before anything comes to blows, negotiates the descent of the ship to some vacant patch of coastline in the planet's northern hemisphere. He's there waiting when the doors open, missing eye patched up with some off-color replacement, leaning his weight against an unfamiliar tree-wrapped battleaxe. He looks tired, but who among them doesn't.

He holds back until she and Heimdall are off the ship before drawing close, waits until he can see the grass flattened under their feet before he's willing to believe they aren't some hoped-for hallucinations. But then he's pulling them both close, the three of them pressed together like staying upright has become a cooperative effort.

"You're alive," he says after he's finally found it in himself to break away. "Both of you. I wasn't sure—" he shakes his head, smiling at them both. It looks something unpracticed, something at risk of cracking the skin. "But, no. You're alive. Nothing else needs to be said."

Not for the moment, at least, but there are greater conversations still on the horizon for all of them. They are sheltering a ship's worth of refugees under their wings and have nothing but a grassy patch of coast with which to rebuild a home.

"I'm sorry about your brother," Val says. Thor's expression goes stiff, like clay baked under a heavy flame.

"He's pulled this trick often enough that I have trouble believing this time it's taken hold. I still expect to hear of him any moment now, some silver-tongued shapeshifter causing trouble in another system. I suppose it's one method of delaying the grief." He looks away, clears his throat, abrupt. "You know, Loki and I came here with our father once." His expression shifts a little like that's not wholly true. "Lovely, isn't it? Not quite Asgard, but it seems somehow familiar. An Asgard that could've been. An Asgard that may yet be."

She'll have to take his word on that—doubts their memories of Asgard line up quite the same—but there is something charming to it, this stretch of cliffs covered in saturated green, miles of untamed ocean beating against the bluffs. Maybe she's a poor judge when her most recent point of comparison is the slapped-together steel and repurposed junkyards of Sakaar's architecture, but Thor's not wrong: it is lovely. Enough to replace the hollowness of having fled their homeworld as refugees, though? Val doubts anything but time or bloodshed could soothe that wound. Still, she's willing to buy into the fairytale, willing to believe they can bandage up the pain with wood slats and fresh paint. Willing to do it for Thor, if nothing else, who seems a moment away from crumbling to pieces, turned to dust even without the power of the stones.

 

—

 

She's still not permitting herself to drink, and so this time, Val works to bury her heartache under sweat-slicked skin and rubbed-raw blisters, wearies herself enough that she can fall into a dreamless sleep without needing to sedate herself with whatever's at hand. Midgard provides them their supplies but little else—understandably so; Asgard wasn't the only world to be suddenly kicked to its knees—and so the rebuilding effort is a slow one, progress delayed by hasty ad-hoc meetings, on-the-fly teaching moments, nails that are uprooted as often as they're nailed down. Deliberately, though, carefully, a collection of homes begin to come together—one-story structures with slatted roofs, shuttered windows, stone-lined hearths built into the walls with insulation against the wind off the water. They build houses, a bar, a general store, in that order. They distract themselves with everyday aches that can be soothed with hot water and kneading palms; for the most part, it works.

(About a month into the endeavor, Thor leaves abruptly. Val questions him before he goes, but without any real heat to it. There'd been a sense of distance to him, his eyes turned far-off like a poor imitation of Heimdall's watch at the Bifrost, and if this excursion is what he needs to reconnect, to once again feel the earth under his feet, Val will let him have it.

He's not gone long, and he's disappointingly quiet upon his return. Goes to his quarters with Stormbreaker hanging low at his side and only says, "I've finished it," when she asks where he's been. His silence is telling—the purple blood along Stormbreaker's edge more so.)

 

—

 

When two weeks go by with no further sign of him, door shut fast and latched even against Val's fist, she asks Heimdall to speak to him. They've had to send for a nearby physician after a woman fell while working on a rooftop, breaking her leg upon landing, and right now Val isn't feeling particularly sympathetic towards whatever it is that's put such a burden on Thor's shoulders. Heimdall at least won't send Thor through the window because he'd failed twice to attend their weekly meetings, hadn't put those great muscles of his behind raising the framework of their new school.

"He sees it as his fault," Heimdall says upon his return, closing Val's door behind them.

"What, exactly?"

"All of it—the loss, the tragedy that followed. He says he had a window to land a killing blow and failed to take it. That Thanos lived long enough to carry out his plan, he lays at his own feet."

"Did you tell him that's absurd?"

"I tried, more than once, but I do not believe he is ready to listen. Perhaps he requires more time; perhaps a different messenger."

Words of encouragement aren't her forte—surely Heimdall sees that. "You've known him longer."

"Since he was a child, and that relationship is a unique one. I may be too close to the role of parent for him to truly hear me." Heimdall looks at her closely, keeps his voice level. "He cares for you, you know."

"He cares for everyone," Val says, warmth creeping up the back of her neck. "Sometimes he seems incapable of doing anything but care."

"If so, then he is now making every effort to strip himself of that tendency. Were he able to turn himself to stone, I believe he would have." Heimdall pulls himself to his feet. "I will not compel you to speak with him, only encourage it. In the meantime, people are beginning to ask questions—reasonable ones about the absence of their king. He is hurting, but so are they, and I worry what becomes of them if Thor neglects his throne much longer." Turns to the door, then pauses. "I worry what becomes of _him_ if he persists in this state long enough that he becomes familiar with nothing but self-blame and the many ways to quiet it."

 

—

 

Val doesn't ignore Heimdall's words—feels instead like they've burrowed under her skin—but she does leave Thor alone for another month before deciding to intervene. Levers open the front door of his hermitage without waiting for an invitation, the smell of stale beer hitting her worse than anything she'd stumbled across in Sakaar's junkyards. He's half-asleep on the couch when she walks in, stubble grown past the point of intent and hair sitting at an uncertain length around his shoulders. He looks as if he hasn't left the house in days—which, Val knows for a fact, he hasn't.

"Alright, Your Majesty," she says, pulling an empty tankard from his hand and shifting him upright. "Enough of this."

When his eyes open, she sees the organic one is bloodshot, half-shut against the light. "Enough of what?"

"I didn't follow you from Sakaar to Midgard to watch you slowly kill yourself. This is not what your people need."

"No, you're right," Thor says, leaning down with his head resting between his legs. Val wonders for a moment if he's about to be sick on the carpet, then sees he's just sifting through the empty bottles for one still rattling with a bit of beer. "They needed someone to protect them, and I fucked that up, didn't I?" His voice is rough, like he's left it unused since Heimdall's visit. He finds a lukewarm can behind the legs of the sofa, foam spilling across the metal as he cracks the top. "They need someone to follow and I can no longer give them that." He takes a long sip, flexing his hand around the absent grip of his hammer. "Am no longer worthy of it."

"Why? Because you could not stop Thanos?"

"Because I could and did not. Because I could have prevented—" he waves his free hand towards the window, as if the gesture is meant to encircle the planet, the galaxy, the whole bloody universe, "— _this_ , and did not. Father banished Hela for less weighty sins."

"Your father banished Hela because she was a power-mad fanatic who would not rest until she'd driven her blades into every world for which the Bifrost opened its gates. _You_ fell short against the most powerful relics reality has ever known. You honestly think to compare the two?"

"I failed them."

"No, Your Majesty. You fail them now in leaving them without guidance. You fail them in suggesting they have nothing left to live for."

"Perhaps they don't."

Val hits him, reflexive. The back of her hand bruising across his cheek.

"I thought it was treason for one of the Valkyrior to lay hands on Asgard's king."

"Then brand me a traitor, have me strung up for treason—so long as you _do something_." She feels tired, too gods-cursed tired to do anything but fall back against a woodworked chair that sits at an angle to the sofa—after the house was done, it had been one of the first pieces they'd moved inside. Some small effort at a home, and look what's become of the place now. "Please, Thor. I do not believe you survived both Hela and Thanos for your life to come to this." There was a time when she'd tried to make a similar argument to herself—that surely she hadn't crawled away as the lone survivor of Hela's massacre for naught, surely she'd been intended for something more. That line of logic had always fallen short, though, against the ache for her lost love, the promise of numbness waiting in the bottle that sat at the reach of her wrist. She can see from the flat look on Thor's face that he'd walked that same mental path in fewer steps. What would she have wanted said to her?

"There is no shame in surviving," she settles on, not quite looking at Thor—not quite not-looking at him either. Eyes focused on the neutral space of his hands. "I know the wound is still raw, not yet scabbed over, but you are allowed to heal. You are not a lesser man to forgive yourself. It is some special kind of foolishness to let a single decision on the battlefield govern the rest of your days." She debates with herself for a moment before reaching out to take his hand, takes it as some small victory that he doesn't pull away. "I have tried similar self-prescribed remedies, pursued them for nearly more millennia than you've lived. There is no amount of numbness that truly erases the pain, only a great number of years wasted in the process. I would give very much not to see the same come of you." Tightens her grip briefly before she pulls her hand back, lifts herself up from the chair. He's still not looking at her, but the beer can seems at least half-full, so perhaps he was truly listening.

"I don't know what your plans look like for tomorrow morning," Val says, brushing some of the dust from her clothes, wondering if she could open a window without him objecting, "but I'll be leading a training session on the eastern fields, if you'd like to attend. More than a few have expressed some interest in learning to fight."

"Why?" Thor asks—the first word he's spoken in some time. "The battle is over."

"No, Your Majesty. It wages on, and they fight it every day. It might do them some good to see you with them out on the front lines."

Thor doesn't quite respond, makes a noncommittal sound in the back of his throat, but Val is willing to take it as a win. That he seems to be giving it serious consideration is certainly a start.

 

—

 

He's not on time—shows up twenty minutes in while Val is walking her trainees through warm-up steps with the quarterstaves—but then there he is, coming up over the bluffs in yesterday's clothes with a blanket slung around his shoulders. Not exactly the picture of a king, but it's not as if any of them are polished edges these days. He's there; that's enough. Val goes over to him when she calls for a break, seeing that he's made some effort to clean up his beard, to pull back his hair so it looks something half decent.

"You showed."

"Well," he shrugs, looks past her, squinting a little against the sun. "It was on the way."

"Was it?"

"Yes. On the way to the—fields. Where I walk. Those fields." He clears his throat, nodding at her as if any of those words were halfway convincing. If it gets him out of the house, she'll allow him all the terrible excuses he wants. "But I had some time before the—walk, so. Thought I'd swing by. You're starting them off with quarterstaves?"

"I figured I'd rather have broken fingers than severed ones," Val says, making little effort to keep herself from smiling. "Would you like to join in? Give them the benefit of lessons learned on Asgard's training court?"

"I was never much good with a quarterstaff."

"I'll go easy on you, if that's your concern."

"It wasn't, actually, though it is now."

"Come on, Your Majesty." She taps him on the back of the knee with one of the spare staves, leads him out onto the makeshift exercise field. The rest of her trainees gather around as if magnetized; this is likely as close as they've seen to entertainment in some time. As they take their places, she's reminded briefly of seeing Thor square up in Sakaar's ring against Banner—reminded of the occasional evening when she'd fought in it herself—but there are no real stakes here, no blood-hungry fans stacked up a quarter-mile in the skies. Still, she thinks, perhaps this demonstration could prove to serve a similar purpose.

"If I win," she says, hands adjusting into their proper grip, feet shifting out into a warrior's stance, "I get your TV and the _Smallville_ DVDs."

"And if I win?" Thor asks, turning his own staff as he feels out its weight and balance. "What do I get?"

"I don't know, Your Majesty—what do you want?"

His face goes stone-still for a moment, expressive even in its blankness; there are too many answers to that question, and in an instant he is reminded of them all. But then he blinks, works at his expression until it's a little more relaxed, looks like he's carrying a less heavy burden. "Your electric water heater," he says, the casual tone in his voice maybe a little forced, but convincing enough, "and that case of flash-grenades-and-or-sex-toys we found in the ship's hold."

"Big plans for the weekend?"

Thor smiles, trades her a series of easy, warm-up strikes with the staves. "Something like that." Around them, Val thinks she hears the sounds of trading bets—at the very least of interest, amusement. She brings her staff around toward his side, follows it up with a shot at his shoulder that she slows at the last moment, enough so for him to throw up a block. This is as much for show as it is practice.

"Shall we make it more interesting?" she asks. "A week of dishwashing duty for the loser?"

"That seems unfair, given I've already several weeks-worth to make up. Perhaps a different sort of wager? Loser composes a song in honor of the winner?"

"That could work. There are a great many things that rhyme with _Valkyrie_."

"A great many more that rhyme with _Thor_ —that's one, for example."

She'd like to believe his smile grows less deliberate as they go on, less conscious as the lines across his forehead smooth out. Everything about this is a little exaggerated, a little stretched-out like children’s playacting, but she’d rather it to the alternative. What’s the Midgard expression? _Fake it till you make it_? She’d gladly see Thor wear this practiced smile until he remembers what a genuine one feels like; she’ll make do with the renewed laughter of the Asgardians in the meantime.

 

—

 

The next day, Thor shows up on her doorstep with the TV under his arm and a plastic bag of microwavable popcorn.

"I'll admit, I had hoped to see you uprooted from the Thor-shaped imprint on your own sofa," Val says as he settles himself on her couch. "That said, this wasn't exactly the alternative I'd had in mind."

"You took my TV. I lay it on your shoulders for not having thought through the consequences."

" _Won_ your TV, and I do look forward to what you come up with for an ode. I expect to hear _glory_ and _Valkyrie_ rhymed at least once." She hesitates before taking a seat on the other end of the couch, legs curled up on the empty stretch of cushion between them. "You doing alright?"

"With the song? Haven't even started it."

"Thor."

He's quiet for a moment, plays with a loose thread on one of the pillowcases. "It isn't your job to look after me, you know. Not that I don't appreciate the sentiment—I do, very much so—but you have enough weight sitting on your shoulders already, and I have no interest in adding to that burden."

Gods—he's thick-headed when he wants to be. "So long as you persist in locking yourself in that house, drinking yourself into a stupor through every waking hour, I'll worry. If you want to change that, taking care of yourself is a good place to start." She nudges him with her toe, settles her feet on his lap. " _Save me by saving them_ —remember that? It works the other way, too."

Thor smiles at her a little. "I seem in need of saving?"

"More so than you did on Sakaar—at least then you had a better haircut."

He laughs, runs a hand through where it's gone shaggy at the back of his neck. Sobers up some as he looks over at her, smile turned a little melancholy. "I would like to move forward—would like to believe that doing so doesn't speak ill of me. Not only for my own sake, but for that of the people I've neglected for too long." He strikes her in that moment as fragile, but not as glass-like breakable as he had in his own home. "I don't know what that path looks like, but I would very much like to try. Perhaps this can be the first step."

"Had I not given it up, I'd gladly raise a drink to that."

"I have as well, at least for the time being. Until it feels a little less like a need."

"Tea, then? Brews up fast since I'm still in possession of my water heater."

"Tea sounds nice."

Val nods, shifting her feet off his lap. She makes to stand, but before she does, Thor catches her hand in his own.

"Thank you," he says, his thumb tracing a back-and-forth across the calluses of her palm. "For offering help even when I wouldn't ask for it, likely didn't deserve it."

"Enough of that," she says, tightening her grip around his. "You won't build the world back up by sanding down pieces of yourself in the process. You deserve help because I say you do, because all of us do now. If you truly wish to thank me, I would rather see you take some of that kindness and extend it to yourself. You could also set up the TV, if you're feeling so inclined."

Thor smiles, presses a kiss to her palm. "As you wish, Lady Valkyrie, hero-of-heroes-and-savior-of-many."

"That's one line done, then," Val says, the skin of her hand feeling strangely warm. "Just another several dozen to go."

"Lady Valkyrie, champion-of-Asgard-and-brewer-of-tea."

She laughs at that, leaves him on the couch as she heads to the counter of her small kitchenette. Glances over every so often at Thor fucking around with the cables, trying to get the TV set up on top of the DVD player—from this angle, it's particularly noticeable where his hair's gone scruffy in the back. A long way from the painted-up gladiator in Sakaar, and further still from his gilt portrait at the ceiling of Asgard's palace, but progress all the same. She still doesn't have much experience with it herself, but she imagines this is what healing looks like.


End file.
